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I didn’t really plan to take a hiatus this summer, but that’s how it’s worked out! Did summer school this year, but that wrapped up last week and now I’m truly on summer break (off to Europe next week!). I actually just accepted a new job (still in early childhood), so am really excited to start the new school year and I’m sure will have lots to post.

Thought I’d post the books we used for summer school in our speech/OT/social work group to coordinate with our themes (+ a few ideas).

Ocean:The Pout Pout Fish (we followed directions—finding a fish or frog and crawling through a tunnel to hand it off to an adult, labeling it; sang this song (“Let’s Go Swimming”); sorted ocean vs. farm animals with Boardmaker visuals and beanie babies; identified animals with the Peek-a-Boo Ocean app).

Zoo: 1,2,3, to the Zoo & Goodnight Gorilla(we matched zoo animal legos, identified plenty of zoo animals on the iPad, made a zoo of our own with beanie babies, made zoo animals with playdoh)

Vacation: Flip Flop (we packed a suitcase to go on vacation with lots of Miss Elena’s clothes, spread out beach towels/pretended to go to the beach, pretended to surf and spot ocean animals while dancing to to “Surfin’ USA”, made sandwiches for a beach picnic with this great kit).

I mentioned that one of my Spring favorites is Muncha Muncha Muncha by Candace Fleming. I just think it’s fabulous for sequencing, making predictions, identifying emotions, labeling veggies, etc. In the artic arena, this week I’ve made it work for targeting /k/ and /g/ primarily, but of course could use it for /m/, “ch”, whatever you can find in the story to emphasize!

Click on the pictures below for the following downloads.

1) Images from the book for sequencing. Sadly, the copy machine at work scans these in b&w, so I’d certainly recommend just copying your own, but here they are just in case you’re in a pinch! I laminated 6 scenes from the book and have been using them for sequencing tasks.

2) /k/ & /g/. Very simple visual to send home/use during sessions. Carrot & garden are two targets that can be elicited frequently in the story.

3) Retelling the story. Visuals to help students retell the story. Used with students targeting sequencing/expanding utterances and also with some artic students for carryover tasks.

4) Garden visuals. I can’t find mine right now (grr), but previously had printed these and laminated/velcro-ed them to target spatial concepts and following directions. Includes veggies all discussed in the story, a fence, etc. Included different sizes so directions could be made more complex if needed (e.g. Put the smallest bunny next to the big lettuce, etc).

This week’s book: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. There are a lot of materials and ideas out there, but wanted to share a few that our program made this week/some tools we loved having for our hour-long speech/motor/social work group. Click above for the SMARTBoard activity my co-worker Kristin and I made. We put a little more effort into this one—hope you enjoy! Focuses on vocabulary from the book and following directions (can make as simple/challenging as you want). Click above also for a sequencing visual (helpful for preK kids starting to retell stories/working on slow, smooth speech/artic targets during less structured tasks). Here are the visuals from the story (part I, part II).

Some photos from our large group activities are below. We read the story and then split into three groups. One group went with our social worker and used the Toca Tea Party App. Another worked with our occupational therapist, rolling out play doh and using cookie cutters. My group used the Cookie Maker app, which is free! I’d highly recommend it. Awesome for following directions and sequencing. The visuals are great—can really see the dough getting mixed and flattening as you roll it, etc. There’s a donut version that looks even better/more complicated (to use with If You Give a Dog a Donut?). Once the kids had all been through each station, we had snack. Was it a healthy snack? Um, no. They each got an oreo cookie and a chocolate chip one…and then—after a taste test—got to pick one more of whichever was their favorite (hey, calories for the sake of answering wh- questions ;-D). After snack we played “Who Stole the Cookie From the Cookie Jar” (always a favorite, no matter what version…chicken nugget from the Happy Meal, syrup from the pancake stack…).

I love all the Laura Numeroff/Felicia Bond books, but the original does the cause-effect relationship the best! Great story for preK.

This week’s book was one I’d guess almost everyone has lying around: The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I know my copy is from my parents’ basement; another childhood relic (my parents deserve a lot of gratitude for forming my love for reading—-so many books around!).

Here are a couple of downloads to start us off. Click here for the Boardmaker visuals that coordinate with the story (made by Jordan), and here for a SMARTBoard lesson I made. Have students click and drag the appropriate quantity and fruit label into the boxes and use the visual sentence strip to help answer “What did the caterpillar eat?”.

In our speech/motor group we read the story along with some food visuals and a stuffed animal caterpillar (the kids had to listen for their item and come up and “feed” it to the caterpillar). The kids then colored their favorite fruit from the story on the last page of a book our OT printed out (looking for attributes in the picture and if they could label it correctly). Here’s a similar booklet. Next, we split the class into 2 groups—one out at the SMARTBoard with me. The other picked a fruit visual out of a mystery box and then crawled through the tunnel, matching their fruit to one on the felt board once at the end of the tunnel. For snack the kids counted out 4 crackers/4 pieces of cheese and then got to pick from 2 of the fruits in the story (strawberries and oranges). The kids completed a sequencing/matching task with the visual shown below (egg, caterpillar, cocoon, butterfly). Question of the day: What was your favorite food the caterpillar ate?

In some of my articulation small groups we also read the story. Used to target /v/ (very!), /k/ (caterpillar), st- (He was still hungry!), /f/ medial (butterfly). We made easy caterpillars made out of paper strips (say a word, make your caterpillar longer!).

A couple of busy lunch-breaks later, and here are a few more things to share! Just thought I’d post a few photos of some of the previously shared materials in action (I decided to laminate/velcro the printable book I had made to go with Lunch—worked really well with my kids who are working on answering questions/expanding utterances with attributes). And here are a couple of pages I made for a student to target pronouns & word retrieval (page 1, page 2). We brainstormed all the red/yellow/green etc things that he/she/they could eat. In need of more inspiration? Denise Fleming’s website is nice—check out her ideas/downloads for Lunch! I like the lift-the-flap mouse. Could have students recall different fruits/vegetables from the story to complete the project.

Wednesday’s my day with K-8th graders, which today means: printing/sending progress reports home & seeing a lot of artic groups, a couple of language groups, and having an Annual Review IEP meeting over lunch. Still quite a few meetings on the books before Spring break starts Friday afternoon—feeling the time crunch and I’d guess I’m not alone, school SLPs! We can do it, one day at a time. 🙂

This week in our motor/speech/language group we’re reading Lunch by Denise Fleming—-one of my favorites! It’s a wonderful book for targeting fruits & vegetables and for making predictions & inferences, and carries over content from last week’s book, in which Bear ate a whole lot of food. My school placement supervisor, Mary, busted Lunch out for a preK large-group lesson back in 2010 and I’ve loved finding ways to utilize it ever since! Nerdy info: my mom ordered me a used copy off Amazon last year for Christmas and it just happened to be signed by the author! Win. 😉

Very possible I’ll share more materials as the week goes on, but for now here are some downloads/ideas for how we’ve used the story:

–Play-based: had the kids feed an alligator puppet plastic fruits/veggies of their choosing after saying a sentence (target: “Eat the…yellow banana”, though was pleasantly surprised with some of our kids busting out utterances along the lines of “Mr. Alligator, would you like one yellow banana? And then another banana?”). Have also used this with categorizing fruits/veggies—e.g. have the puppet ONLY want to eat veggies.

Karma Wilson is another one of our main authors for the year, so we’ve read most of the “Bear” books already. This week’s pick? The spring-themed Bear Wants More, in which the bear just can’t stop eating, and eventually can’t fit back into his own cave.

This week in our speech/motor group we read the story (great opportunities for recall/sequencing: what did bear already eat? what did he eat next?) and then split the class into two groups: one went to work with our OT on their “fishing” skills, the other group stayed with me. I set out a bunch of different-colored “baskets” along with a corresponding sentence strip (e.g. “I put the yellow ____ in the yellow basket”). Each child picked a picture of a fruit or vegetable out of the “mystery bag” , labeled it, and decided which color basket to place it in (most of our kids can easily match colors, but it’s a nice review of a mastered skill!). Then I asked them what they put in the basket—they used the sentence strip to help them if needed. After each child had a turn, I had them brainstorm what other fruits/vegetables could go in the red/blue/green, etc baskets. Visuals made by Kristin.

For our “question of the day” the kids had to vote on which fruit was their favorite (strawberry/orange/grapes) and then had a chance to work on those fine motor skills/attributes by drawing their fruit of choice. We ate granola bars for snack, equating them to the honey cakes from the story.

I made up a simple worksheet (“He wants more _____”) and used it with both my artic and language kids—–for my artic kids, I let them pick any of their target words (e.g. initial /k/: car, cat, kangaroo) and glue them in the empty box to create silly sentences of their choosing (use any Bingo-esque printouts you have or make your own visuals). With my language kids, I made up visuals to go with all the foods from the story. It was also nice pronoun practice/use of third person singular -s. This morning I whipped up a SMARTBoard activity in the same vein to use with my large group—-the kids got to choose which items the bear would want to eat (a mixture of things he actually did eat in the story and the fruits/vegetables we put in baskets) and tell me what bear wanted.